


From the Ashes

by xxTwasADreamxx



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 06:43:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4050139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxTwasADreamxx/pseuds/xxTwasADreamxx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something had planted itself inside her mind that night in the darkness of a practice room, formed until it pulsed through her head every free second she had: a deep obsession with Terence Fletcher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Hi again! Wow, I'm on a roll today with Whiplash fics, two in one day is a lot for me. I gender bended Andrew 'cause I'd been thinking about it for awhile. Hope it's still in character! Enjoy :)
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

_From the Ashes_

         When Adrian was nine and her father bought her first drum set, her uncle protested that drumming wasn’t a girls hobby. The blisters and calluses that formed on her delicate child’s hands, the hard pounding sound the kit made, these weren’t feminine things. Neither was jazz-only jazz _singers_ could be girls, he argued, and Adrian had a shit voice.

         When she was eleven and first started getting into jazz, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, she would lie for hours in her room listening to their albums while staring at the blank white ceiling. Her room became littered with posters of famous jazz musicians, and her drum kit became her bible. Every day she would practice for hours, swore to herself she’d become the best, the greatest jazz drummer this century had ever seen. Adrian Neiman was going to be someone.

         Sometimes kids beat her up for it-she was a weird kid, spouting off jazz facts and english quotes like she was a professor. Adrian didn’t really care about making friends, which just added to her weirdness, because who likes being alone? Her father told her it was because they were jealous, but Adrian knew that wasn’t the case. They weren’t jealous of her drumming or her pretty face or her easily gained A’s. They were mad because she was different, and different wasn’t good.

         Later, when she was first applying to Shaffer, her college counselor told her they’d accept her just because she was a girl who played drums. This made her angry-she wanted to be accepted on talent, not on gender. That was sexist in itself, and if there was one thing Adrian hated (other than people who hated jazz), it was sexism. She was a girl, yes, and she took pride in her long hair and nice eyes as much as she did her drumming, but they weren’t mutually exclusive things.

         So when Adrian arrived at Shaffer her first day, she was determined to make a name for herself as ‘best drummer of the twenty first century’, not just ‘best female drummer’.

...

         The first time Adrian saw Terence Fletcher it was almost midnight on a Friday, and most nineteen year old college kids were out getting drunk or at least studying. Adrian thought, later, that maybe this was what caught him-not her double time swing, which was good but nothing great, but the fact that here she was using her free time to practice it at 11:20 pm.

         “Sorry,” she stuttered out when he slammed the door open, muscled arms crossing and straining at his black t-shirt. “I didn’t know anyone was he-”

         He shut her up and clenched his fist and made her play, and for a few minutes she lost herself in her music, mind clearing like it always did. There was something dangerous in the way she played, the way it pulled her in; sometimes Adrian feared she wouldn’t return from that place she went.

         And then he was gone and so was her chance at getting into his band. But something had planted itself inside her mind that night in the darkness of a practice room, formed until it pulsed through her head every free second she had: a deep obsession with Terence Fletcher.

...

         When Fletcher first picked her up from the ashes of Nassau, Adrian thought of him as her knight in shining armor. He was practiced and stern and accomplished, and he had seen something in her no one else had. And yeah, it scared her the way he tore apart that kid who was off key, but then he had his hand pressed inches away from her head and he was leaning in and smiling and she was spilling her guts and mother problems to him, and she felt safer than she had in awhile.

         How wrong she was.

         When he had screamed at her that first time, leaned in close so she could feel his breath hot on her cheek and then slapped her across the face so it left a mark, she hated herself. Hated herself for messing up, breaking down, crying like the stereotypical girl these pigs thought she was. She hated him, too. Hated that he could make her act this way.

         She thought maybe if she practiced and practiced he would like her, and then she could like herself. And she did, practiced until she bled, red drops of her life dripping onto the kit she used and sores forming and reforming because she wasn’t giving them time to heal. She was a maniac, drumming until she felt like passing out, collapsing into her bed every night past midnight with dried sweat caking her brow and rusted blood painting her hands tie-dye.

         But it paid off, in the end, because she lost Tanner’s (self-righteous prick) folder but she knew that fucking song by heart. And Fletcher let her play, and she was miraculous. She wanted his smile, though, wanted his approval as badly as she wanted to breathe, so she tried harder.

...

         Adrian thought she might have seen a strange look of admiration in Fletcher’s eyes when he saw her broken and bloody and still sitting down to play Caravan. Her hair tie had broken in the crash but the loose strands were held back with matted blood anyway, and even though her finger was probably broken and still gushing blood, and she might have had a head wound, Adrian knew she could play. Because she wasn’t a self-righteous prick like Tanner, she _had_ deserved that part.

         And then her body failed her, she failed herself, and everything went to shit.

         “You’re done,” Fletcher snarled at her, her head lolling forward and finger throbbing. “You’re done, Neiman.”

         She couldn’t help it, the anger welling inside of her chest; it was like a tsunami, pulling back from the shore in despair and then flowing over her mind, destroying everything in its path with its force. She went at him like a mad woman, angry at him, angry at herself, angry at life. It wasn’t fair because she deserved that part, she deserved his approval, and she couldn’t help it when she flew across the stage and fell on him cursing him to hell. She’d gotten it from him, after all: he was the one who made her that way.

...

         Adrian thought often about killing herself. She wasn’t even miserable anymore-it was like she was numb, unfeeling. Without Shaffer, without drumming and jazz (and Fletcher) she was nothing. Worse than death, this was, her hands aching to hold sticks but her mind denying them.

         She didn’t know what happened to make her go into the club when she saw his name blaring in white chalk on the sign outside; it was like some unknown force took over her body, forced her just inside the door so she could watch him with greedy eyes. She swallowed him with her gaze, devoured the way his fingers moved with grace over piano keys and his slight smile as the set ended. She was frozen to her spot, staring at him, and then his icy blue gaze met hers and she snapped out of it.

         She held back a gasp of apprehension as she turned, tried to push her way out, but suddenly she heard a short, flat, “Adrian”, whirled around and there he was and she was caught.

         He ordered a whiskey and she got a coke because she was still underage and this place carded. They sat for a few minutes in awkward silence nursing their drinks. Adrian’s fingers clenched and twisted the glass, and she stared down at the table even though she could still feel his eyes on her.

         “You may have heard I’m not at Shaffer anymore,” he said finally, and she looked up and pretended to be surprised.

         He seemed different, somehow, sadder. Even as he talked and told her about his failure in making a Charlie Parker, about throwing cymbals and good jobs, she could sense it. Maybe it was the way his face didn’t have the tight concentration she was so used to anymore, or his self deprecating smile, but Adrian knew he was just as miserable as she was.

         When he invited her to play in JVC at Lincoln Center, she automatically said yes, because she thought that it was better to be miserable with someone else than alone.

...

         It was her masterpiece, that drum solo, and she was Fletcher’s masterpiece. His only Charlie Parker. They both flew that night, and for the first time Adrian thought she knew true happiness. She felt like she was on the best drugs, high on adrenaline and that slight crinkle-eyed smile Fletcher had given her as she finished. Afterwards there were people and congratulations and the whole time his hand was burning through her shirt, heavy on her shoulder and the small of her back. She was bouncing with joy and he kept her tethered so she didn’t go up right out of the ceiling and into the sky, never to return.

         Days later she was at his apartment, and they were talking about what she was going to say in interviews and where she would play and she was a little drunk off the strong whiskey he had given her, and she kissed him.

         He’d been rolling his eyes at her, slapped her sort of hard on the cheek at some dumb self congratulatory comment she’d made, and she shivered at the touch of his hand on her skin and maybe she was drunker than she had realized.

         He didn’t stop her, but he didn’t kiss back.

         She leaned in further, determined, pressing her mouth hard to his and pushing her tongue out to lick his lip and when that didn’t elicit a reaction she bit, _hard_.

         He made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a groan, and as blood flowed from his cut lip he kissed her back like an animal.

         Somehow she ended up sucking him off on the couch and swallowing his come like she never had with Nick, because usually she found that shit gross but this was Fletcher and everything was different with Fletcher. She looked up at him from her position on the floor and he was looking back down at her with something akin to worship in his eyes, but then it was back to pissed off Fletcher, except this time pissed off Fletcher pulled her up to the couch and shoved his hand down her pants and hooked his fingers inside of her until she came keening his name into the skin of his neck.

         She awoke later with a headache and horny, found him in the kitchen and gulped down advil and orange juice before pulling him into another kiss. He fucked her on the kitchen counter, her head ever so often banging into a cabinet and his thrusts brutally pushing her hip into the edge of the marble. She raked bloody fingerprints down his back and he left bruises on her hips that she treasured for days after.

            And then they discussed her burgeoning career over coffee and Adrian hadn’t been numb for awhile, and the sun was shining through the window and her back was aching from Fletcher’s rough handling and she was happy.


End file.
